dictionary of Diyarbakir Military Prison

15.09.2024-1.10.2024

During the residency, Zilan Imsik will be working on a project focusing on Diyarbakir Military Prison, where mostly Kurdish political prisoners were held.

"Known in the 1980s as one of the worst prisons in the world, a new language was adopted by the military in the prison. I will be looking at the language that was used, and how words lost their original meanings within the prison and came to represent a form of torture. As the vocabulary that was used is the representation of the world that was created within the prison, I aim to create a kind of dictionary of this world during the residency. To achieve this I will examine testimonies from former prisoners, as well as letters and postcards that were sent from the prison by a relative of mine, who was a political prisoner there for 7 years.

As the letters sent from the prison were subject to inspection by the military, they do not directly reference the prison conditions. Therefore, I will analyse these letters, looking for patterns in vocabulary and looking at how my father expressed his experiences through his choice of words. Thinking about the form and context of this dictionary will be one of my objectives during the residency. Upon completion of the dictionary, I plan to create a multimedia installation of this world through the vocabulary that was used and what they represented. Currently, the prison is being transformed into a "cultural centre" by the Turkish government as one of their erasure efforts. I am especially interested in creating this work as I aim to provide a counter-narrative to the state’s".